True Religion, the denim label whose horseshoe-stitched jeans defined a certain mid-2000s wardrobe, is coming to Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream with what will be its first non-outlet store on Long Island. Timberland and T-Mobile are coming with it, the latest names to join a makeover that is remaking one of Long Island's biggest malls almost end to end.

Word of the three newcomers surfaced in the final days of September, and the mall's own redevelopment page now lists True Religion and Timberland among the tenants joining the revamped lineup. For True Religion, whose Long Island presence has run through outlet centers until now, Green Acres will be a full-price flagship in Nassau County.

A mall tearing itself down to build back

Green Acres broke ground in May 2025 on a 400,000 square foot redevelopment, and the method is blunt: tear down or gut the former department store boxes that anchored the property for decades, open up the sightlines they blocked, and use the land for shops that face outward instead of inward. The plans include a new grand entrance and a streetscape of outward-facing storefronts mixed with full-service and quick-service restaurants, a grocery store and entertainment.

The anchor of the next phase is an 80,000 square foot ShopRite, a full-size supermarket built into a property that spent decades organized around department stores. It is the clearest sign of what malls on Long Island are becoming: less a place you walk laps in, more a main street with parking.

The food list reads like a greatest hits album

The dining slate the mall has announced for the redevelopment includes Fogo de Chão, the Brazilian steakhouse, along with The Cheesecake Factory, Shake Shack, Dave's Hot Chicken, Panda Express, Paris Baguette and Tony's Tacos. Sephora is coming on the retail side. None of those names carried a Valley Stream address before this project.

The denim brand's return to the spotlight gives the signing some extra pull. True Religion was founded in 2002 and became one of the defining premium denim names of that decade, and the label has been riding a revival as 2000s fashion cycles back through a generation that was in grade school the first time around. A full-price store in Nassau County is a bet that the second act has legs.

What has already opened

The makeover is far enough along that parts of it are simply open. AKIRA, the Chicago women's fashion retailer, opened ahead of last year's holiday season as its first store on Long Island. JD Sports followed in January. Foot Locker rebuilt its store into one of its newest formats and added an interactive Kids Foot Locker beside it. They joined a lineup that already includes UNIQLO, Primark, H&M and Old Navy, a roster few malls in the region can match.

The mall has been working on how people get there too. In August it launched a free shuttle pilot for Valley Stream shoppers, a small thing that says something about who the mall thinks its customer is: the neighborhood around it, not just the cars passing on Sunrise Highway.

The bigger picture

Green Acres sits on Sunrise Highway at the Queens line, and for decades its identity was its size. The new bet, the same one Smith Haven Mall is making in Lake Grove with its own makeover, is that size alone no longer fills a parking lot. What fills it is a supermarket, a steakhouse, a gym bag of first-on-Long-Island brands and a reason to come twice a week instead of twice a year.

For a shopper, the practical version is this: the next couple of years at Green Acres will keep adding names you currently drive into Queens or Manhattan to visit, True Religion now among them, and the mall you remember as a box of department stores will look less like one every season.